The Official Website of the Jekyll Estate

Gertrude Jekyll (1843-1932), created some 400 gardens in the UK, Europe and America; her influence on garden design has been pervasive to this day. She spent most of her life in Surrey, England, latterly at Munstead Wood, Godalming. She ran a garden centre there and bred many new plants. Some of her gardens have been faithfully restored, wholly or partly, and can be visited. Godalming Museum has many of her notebooks and copies of all her garden drawings, (compiled and sorted by members of the Surrey Gardens Trust); the original drawings are in the University of California, Berkeley.

Her own books about gardening are widely read in modern editions; much has been written about her by others. She contributed over 1,000 articles to Country Life, The Garden and other magazines. A complete list of every book and article written by her is in the Bookshop section of this site. A talented painter, photographer, designer and craftswoman; she was much influenced by Arts & Crafts principles.

Her brother, Walter, was a friend of the author, Robert Louis Stevenson; his name may have been borrowed for the title of his famous Jekyll & Hyde story. The family historian, Sir Herbert Jekyll (1846-1932), was Gertrude’s younger brother. He was a military engineer and civil servant, a man of considerable talent over a wide area, ranging from founding the Bach Choir in London and laying telegraph lines in Africa to designing the road network from London and master-minding the British Pavilion, with Sir Edwin Lutyens, at the Paris Exhibition of 1900.

Gertrude Jekyll is well known for her association with the English architect, Sir Edwin Lutyens; she collaborated with him on gardens for many of his houses.